Mesoamerican Pantheonweapon
Blowgun of the Hero Twins
- Precision Strike
- Trickster Aim
- Underworld Cunning
The blowgun Hunahpu and Xbalanque use to strike the arrogant bird-demon Seven Macaw and later to navigate the trials of Xibalba.
About Blowgun of the Hero Twins
Hunahpu's shot at Seven Macaw
The Popol Vuh (K'iche' Maya, colonial alphabetic text from older oral and possibly hieroglyphic tradition): the Hero Twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque shoot the arrogant bird-demon Seven Macaw with a blowgun; later they use cunning in the houses of Xibalba. The blowgun is a hunter's tool in the narrative, not a named relic with a genealogy of smiths. The manuscript is sixteenth-to-eighteenth century; the story is older. There is no archaeological "original blowgun of the twins." Precision and trick, not a glowing unique weapon, win the shots.
Origin
Popol Vuh: the twins' tool against Seven Macaw and the lords of death.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Popol Vuh
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
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